I think anti trust still loomed when they had their best shot at mobile too.

When they had windows mobile and Xbox was the largest console in the US I thought for sure they'd be able to dominate.

I basically pictured them using a Microsoft account to allow for the phone to participate in Xbox chat and let people talk to their gaming friends on the go. It seemed like a no brainer to me that they could dominate chat, have significant phone penetration with gamers, and keep people a reason to stick with the Xbox ecosystem.

Instead they went with Skype and a weak mobile effort neither integrated with Xbox.

I imagine just 400 million less desktops as they in general become less and less important.

I know a lot of people that have a work laptop and just use a tablet/mobile otherwise.

People that wouldn't have dreamed of not having a desktop or laptop (or even one of each) 10 years ago.

I have a desktop and a laptop, but haven't turned on either for months unless you count my steam deck (which I have docked for some light desktop work).

So basically the copy they made off the pirate site: illegal (to avoid paying)

The internal copies they made after that (or from purchased and scanned books): legal and fair use?

If they weren't uploading torrents while doing the downloading I assume their (non punitive) damage is limited to the cost of the book (memory is weak on this, but I believe the statutory damage comes from distributing illegal copies).

I assume they get away with paying what they would have anyway, plus court fees (since the actual use of the copy was fair use).

I don't disagree.

I was absolutely appalled the first time I ordered pizza and it suggested affirm.

But I also know that if I were to lend someone money I'd absolutely want to know they were doing that (or more accurately make sure they weren't doing it).

Mostly as is 2%?

Because the industry crept up outside of the traditional lending environment.

They wouldn't formally check your credit, and would report it unless you defaulted. The idea being that small short term loans would be pretty secure and the money in theory was to be made on fees to merchants (the pitch was that by making checkout easier they could increase sales for a merchant and get a few percent cut (effectively getting 18% APR (3% on 2 months)).

In an effort to grow they started being available everywhere for everything (door dash offers it for instance) and people easily run up $1,000+ in I'm debt, and paying off in the recommended 4 payments becomes 100s or 1000s a month, those who don't pay that much end up with huge fees and what not.

I assume what's happening now is the banks want to see this thousands of dollars of shadow debt before approving a loan.

I assume that's almost definitely the case.

But also the fact that they are getting very popular.

I'd want to know if a potential customer has $1500 in BNPL for $750/month minimum payment before I left them money.

Where I work we have eastern US (50%), very few UK (10%), and India (40%). Some of the Indian people have crap (for them) hours (1-9pm).

We have the spread so there's 24 hour coverage, and processes that take a while can have people working on them throughout the day.

For example this morning I overlapped with someone from India 8-10am for a handoff, and then gave them instructions for when they get in around midnight (my time).

When things are busier I start at 6am (and leave early) to have a little more overlap.

To get 6ish more hours of work in a 24 hour period it seems like a reasonable way to handle it to me.

Specifically we work with data migration and have to get things handled within specific periods of time, the extra around the clock work force is makes my life overall much much better.

If the auto transcribing and meeting notes count as AI, then it is extremely used in teams (and extremely useful).

Manuals are going to go away in performance cars too now that they're objectively lower performance.

It's all going to be DCT at the high end (perhaps creeping down), an automatics/CVTs.

It's a shame, I too love a manual, but it's less good for performance, and doesn't really save money for manufacturers any more (killing the low end).

That assumes that either:
1) you can reliably hire elite programmers and use AI for the rest
Or
2) a team with diverse levels of talents is worse than a team with all average talents

I have no opinion on the answer to those two questions, but it doesn't seem obvious to me that pure average talent would be better than a mixed talent team.

I wish it worked that way in practice, but from what I can tell the only mechanism to enforce the emoluments clause seems to be impeachment which appears to be pretty much a non starter.

If it is illegal, it's only for running amuck of a pretty much unenforceable part of the constitution.

They probably got mixed up because they were trying to game the first year?

It seems like they couldn't decide on 2017, which I assume would impact their final year of protection.

In the process they got mixed up and failed to keep things going in 2019.

So it wasn't about the $450, it was about the $x they'd get with that extra year of protection.

They probably gutted middle management, as this is exactly the type of thing a good middle manager will hassle people about until it gets handled.